For many years, and continuing up to the present time, rural mailbox service has been provided with more thought to the convenience and efficiency of the rural carrier than to the rural customer. Rural mailboxes have long been provided with red flags which the customer can elevate to be viewed by the carrier at the time the customer puts mail for pickup into the mailbox. According to the regulations of the United States Postal Service, "rural carriers are required to lower the regular signal flag after collecting mail from the box, but they are not permitted to operate any other signal device. Under these circumstances, customers would know that outgoing mail had been collected but would not know if mail had been delivered."
Under these regulations, all rural mailbox customers who can view the mailbox from their dwellings, who didn't put out mail on a particular day and who don't stand and watch to see whether the carrier stops at the box, must journey to the mailbox to find out whether any mail has been delivered. Obviously this represents hundreds of thousands of unnecessary trips to and from rural mailboxes every day, and represents, overall, an enormous waste of time, energy and productivity.
Under existing regulations, what is needed is a mailbox signal apparatus which will automatically indicate when the mailbox door has been opened and closed again. By and large, this will only happen when the rural carrier deposits mail in the box.
A preliminary search has been made on this invention, and the following patents were located; U.S. Pat. No. 3,722,460, granted to James in March of 1973; U.S. Pat. No. 3,815,811, granted to Harmon in June of 1974; U.S. Pat. No. 3,891,139, granted to Redling in June of 1975; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,018,379, granted to Carter in April of 1977.
The patent to Redling discloses the idea of pivoting a signal panel to the back of a mailbox to have it automatically fall down upon the opening of the front door of the mailbox, the back of the panel being in contrasting color. It is to be noted, however, that Redling lives in Honolulu, Hawaii and that his device depends entirely on operation by gravity after a magnet inside of the mailbox has been moved away from the back end of the box to release the magnetically attractable signal panel. Hopefully this device will be substantially entirely satisfactory in Hawaii, but it is not a satisfactory device for use in the continental United States where the action of snow, sleet and ice must be taken into effect and where a positive action to break the signal panel free from the rear of the mailbox is not only desirable but, in many instances, absolutely necessary to the proper operation of the device.
A further drawback to the Redling device is that it is not applicable as an "add on" to the hundreds of thousands of rural mailboxes now in use.
The patent to James discloses a signal panel which is pivotally mounted below the bottom of the rear end of a rural mailbox and which is, or tends to be, positively forced to pivot when the mailbox door is opened. However, because the signal panel falls below the bottom of the mailbox, the color contrast between the signal panel color and the mailbox color may be lost in certain seasons of the year when the background for the signal panel, when viewed from the customer's abode may be the green of grass, the brown or red of mud, the white of snow or any of the various colors of a roadway. In areas where wind is prevalent during a large portion of many days, the signal panel of James can be expected to be tilted by the wind to a perhaps unviewable or unrecognizable angle. As the James mailbox signal is constructed, wind gusts could conceivably recock the device by swinging the signal panel back up into its upper position to falsely indicate that the mailbox had not been serviced.
The patent to Harmon shows a pivotable "flag member 12" which pivots from horizontal to vertical position when the mailbox door is opened. While this device could obviously be installed on either the right or the left side of the mailbox, it would appear to be useful only on mailboxes where the customer had a good view of one of the flat sides of the mailbox from his dwelling place. As in the case of the previously mentioned James mailbox, the element of color contrast between the "flag member 12" and the color of the mailbox is lost due to the positioning of the flag.
The patent to Carter discloses a signal panel or plate 12 which is upright and in view until such time as the mailbox door is opened and then falls from view upon the opening of the door. The United States Postal Service has set up certain requirements for the use of such devices, and it would appear that the Carter device would not qualify to be permissible.
The regulations of the United States Postal Service relative to such devices as of Feb. 1, 1978 were as follows:
The United States Postal Service does not object to the use of special signal devices for rural mailboxes, designed to indicate to customers that the carrier has served the box, provided it:
1. Does not obstruct or otherwise interfere with the normal operation of the regular flag on the box,
2. Does not interfere with the operation of the door,
3. Does not constitute a hazard to the carrier when serving the box,
4. Does not contain any advertising, and
5. Is not painted red.
The device of the Carter patent, if used along with the regular red flag on the box, would tend to block the view of the regular flag and so to prevent the rural carrier from determining, as he drove along the road, whether the red flag was up. Thus he would not know whether he should make a stop if both flags were in the air and one interfered with the other.
If the device of the Carter patent is to take the place of the regular red flag, then it can only be placed in the air when there is mail to be picked up, and the customer would have no signal available to indicate whether the carrier had stopped at the box if there were not mail for pick up in it.
Once again, the contrast between the signal panel and the color of the rural mailbox is lost where the signal flap or panel is not finally positioned over a portion of the box.
Neither applicant nor those in privity with applicant knows of any prior art closer than that listed above, and knows of no prior art which anticipates the claims of the invention set out herein.